Jeez-Laweez, you two - Riley'un Cameron... Must be nice to not have to use finners'un toes (and nose and ears and eyes, and all appendages... five???? :D) to count... I see this stuff and cover my eyes, "I CAN'T READ YOU!!! LA, LA, LA - LA, LA!!!" Not cause I don't like the topic or ittiz offensive... I'm just too obtuse to get it!!! Carry on, you chem/physics Whizzes! green, CH #2156 -----Original Message----- From: owner-chile-heads@globalgarden.com [mailto:owner-chile-heads@globalgarden.com]On Behalf Of Mary & Riley Sent: Friday, August 17, 2001 12:11 PM To: Cameron Begg; chile-heads@globalgarden.com; DWALLS9102@aol.com Subject: RE: [CH] Re: {CH} Chile Head forum > >Cameron, please explain to me how the ethanol is able to carry away > >the capsaicin with it as it evaporates. > capsaicins, but all sorts of other stuff too. In the process of > evaporating off the constituents the temperature gets high enough for > you to loose the good stuff. Take a sniff and you'll know what I > mean. You need to lower the boiling temperature by lowering the > pressure. Move to Denver? > Cameron, You may be mistaken. For one thing moving to Denver would lower the boiling point of capsaicin too. But I think there's another process going on here. Capsaicin: Melting point: 65 oC (Ref 8, 1811) Boiling point: 210-220 oC at 0.01 torr pressure (Ref 8, 1811) 8: The Merck Index. 12th Edition. Merck & Co., Inc. Whitehouse Station, NJ. 1996. Note the pressure--that's a pretty hard vacuum. Got this from Mike's Pepper Garden. http://edgein.home.mindspring.com/science/majorcap2.html 95% ethanol/water is a constant boiling mixture and the ethanol/water proportions don't change, as you know. I thought perhaps there was something analogous with steam stripping going on here, but that doesn't apply to miscible compounds. If he's boiling it a long time then capsaicin is lost. After all, it's going into the air, not a fractional column. But judging from the boiling point I wouldn't think much would be lost. Hydrolysis perhaps? Wimpy habaneros? Riley